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Crisis reaches Russia – Delfino refuses to play

Our contact in Russia has informed us about some major development in Russia. According to him, the global financial crisis is having a direct effect on the Russian basketball. If you really think about it, it just makes sense and critics of high-paying Russian investors are finally proven right.

He also explains why Russia is having problems:

Much depends on the value of the dollar. If the oil prices keep dropping – the ruble (Russian currency) will fall. It is expected that the ruble will fall. From there, everything will get worse. Many Russian basketball contracts are in dollars, but sponsorship of the clubs and salaries is in rubles, meaning the clubs will have to pay more money to their players.

If you take a look at the sponsors and their stocks, it is obvious what clubs will or already have problems.

CSKA Moscow, Dynamo, Khimki, Triumph Lyubertsy and CSK VVS are not paying salaries right now. While CSKA and Dynamo are just going through long delays, Khimki’s and Triumph’s situations are much worse. The CSKA women’s team is on the edge of bankruptcy: Its main sponsor sold his business and the new owner does not want to have any relationship with the club.

But that does not mean that CSKA will have any problems with players, though there has been a delay to payment of more than a month. CSKA CEO Andrey Vatutin said that there are difficulties, but the main sponsor of the team, Norilsk Nickel, has assured it would continue to fully meet its financial obligations. It is not clear why CSKA has problems, because Norilsk Nickel stocks have not fallen significantly for the year.

There are more problems with Khimki and Triumph: Yesterday, Carlos Delfino refused to go to play in the third quarter. Head coach Kestutis Kemzura said that he doesn’t want to see a player ignoring his instructions.

I am sure Carlos doesn’t want to see his team not paying him, either.

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I don’t really expect CSKA to suffer most from the economical crisis. I think that rather Khimki and Triumph may have to cut one or two of their highest paid players. Some Euroleague GMs will watch closely.

I think that there could also be some NBA team interested to a couple of players. For example Delfino, who left NBA for money, could come back to the US with a good offer (there are not enough money to keep him in Europe right now, and of course there are a couple of teams who would be happy to take Carlos). Also Lampe could have another NBA shot (he improved a lot from his first NBA experience and he’s still young – 23). Garbajosa could eventually come back to Spain. Krstic has the bigger Triumph contract, but there are also a couple of American players who could go away. Krstic has NBA value, but Nets doesn’t need him right now. Mayve some other team does, and he could also go overseas. There are also a couple of American players from Triumph who could go elsewhere…anyway, this is a lesson, I think: the NBA system after all is the best one: this system keeps teams away from failure, and guarantees players’ contract…Russian basketball has low TV contracts, low pubblic attendance (not more than 2-3 thousand people per game). When the owner’s moneys are over, teams fail. And this is a warning also for other Euro teams, who spend a lot of money for players: this trend couldn’t be anymore, will soon stop…

The mistake was signing Delfino in the first place. Doesn’t anyone bother to notice shooting percentage? his missing all the clutch shots? It should be “Chuck” Delfino. Why do tv announcers rave about the odd 3 pointer he hits and forget the three he missed, especially when the whole team can do better? Replay the Argentine team games and take a look how much Delfino held back that team with his bad shots and failure to make passes. Maybe somehow or other this guy sells tickets, but not to anyone who knows how to play basketball. Hype in the financial world brought us the crisis. Hype in professional sports forces us to pay for and suffer “stars” like Delfino. Sure bet for any GM who wants to see his team slide and lose its chances. Good candidate for Real Madrid in Spain which always manages to sign a big loser each year.

Global crisis as Russians see it
The corridors in office buildings have either pluses or minuses. Let’s not speak about minuses but about pluses. Everybody knows each other; you can hear helloes, greetings, goodmornings.

But the last few months silence dominates here.

Crowds of clients just disappeared, nobody enters and asks:”Sorry, where can I find?..” , there are no more strangers smoking in common rest rooms, girls from nearby offices don’t rush in asking to change money for a change. The director of real estate office drooped off, you can’t hear scissors and hairdryers from a hairdressing salon, and women from the office you never could spell its name frequently hang “Closed for today” card. People drink a lot in the offices and it’s impossible to breathe in smoking areas. Visits of Santa and parties had been cancelled this year.http://ua-ru-news.blogspot.com/2009/02/global-crisis-as-russians-see-it.html

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BallinEurope.com was founded in September 2007 by Christophe Ney (who now runs the excellent scouting-themed website European Prospects) and Tobias Seitz, both then bloggers for FIBA.com with over 10 years’ worth of experience in the professional basketball world each. The mission then was to “provide a very unique perspective of Basketball in and about Europe.”